Experiences from the free residential attic insulation programme

When homeowners think about energy loss, draughty windows or an ageing boiler usually come to mind first. Few think to look up. Yet in many homes, that is exactly where the problem lies. The greatest source of heat loss often escapes not through the walls, but through the ceiling above, an uninsulated or outdated attic that let’s go of up to 25-30% of a building’s total energy. It is an unremarkable fix, but one that delivers outsized results. 

The Free Residential Attic Insulation Programme 

That was the premise behind the Free Residential Attic Insulation Programme, carried out across Hajdú-Bihar County in two phases, from August 2024 to the end of 2025.The programme provided homeowners with free, professional attic floor insulation to reduce heat loss, funded entirely through the sale of certified energy savings rather than public funds. As an energy agency, LENERG coordinated the entire project from start to finish. 

Behind the scenes, the agency built an automated system from the ground up. It processed applications, passed data to contractors and auditors, and fed everything into the contract documentation. This laid the groundwork for a programme that would ultimately reach thousands of homes. The insulation itself was equally intricate. Modern floor insulation is not a single material, but a carefully layered system. 

A vapour barrier foil was placed first, on the floor slab, to keep moisture from the heated living space out of the insulation. Two layers of insulation material followed, laid in a bonded pattern. This created uniform thermal protection and minimised the thermal bridges that let heat escape. A vapour-permeable foil completed the system, protecting the insulation while still allowing the structure to ventilate naturally. The result: an average family home achieved energy savings of around 30%, without compromising the building’s ability to breathe. 

During preparations for the work, an unexpected discovery emerged. Clearing an attic before installing insulation often revealed old, flammable materials: textiles, stacks of paper, and wood waste. Left in place, these items would not only have reduced the insulation’s effectiveness, they would also have posed a genuine fire risk. Removing them meant floor insulation delivered two improvements at once, in many homes: greater energy efficiency, and a safer attic. 

Different towns, different results 

Not every town progressed at the same pace. In Bihartorda, progress was particularly rapid, driven by a local government that proved agile and genuinely easy to work with. Balmazújváros illustrates a different achievement: with a population of around 17 000, the town saw roughly 850 properties insulated in just over six months, a scale made possible through proper organisation and genuine openness among residents. 

By the end of the programme, the method had reached 5 500 homes, insulating more than half a million square metres of floor space and certifying energy savings of over 250 000 GJ. Most of the properties were Kádár-kocka, or “Hungarian Cube“, family houses, a building type where floor insulation proved especially effective at cutting heating needs. 

Free for residents, funded by the market 

The programme runs entirely on a market basis, with no state or public funding behind it. The energy savings it delivers are professionally audited, and those verified savings are then sold, generating the revenue that covers materials, labour and the full cost of implementation. Homeowners get a long-term improvement to their property without having to put any money in themselves. 

Behind that simplicity sat a considerable amount of invisible work. Because the whole system runs on market logic, every cost and every figure had to be exact, savings had to be proven to the Energy Authority. The system was built from scratch, learned as it went, and eventually refined to the point where a team of just three can now process 60-80 complete sets of documentation per day. 

This best practice is extracted from our publication ‘Sustainable Regions in Action’. Discover more best practices here!